I listen to the alarm clock as it screams in my face. Finally, I manage to swing my feet out of my bed and get ready for work just like I do every morning. The bright sun peeks over the large hill that is off in the distance. I hobble over to the bathroom and turn on the blinding lights. I turn on the shower and go to the bathroom as I wait for the water to heat up a little. We moved into this house about a month ago and I still can’t figure out how to get the water temperature in the shower to be in between boiling lava and artic cold snow blizzard. After I feel the water for a good temperature, I hop in just to wake myself up a little more for the day. While I’m in the shower I think of all the things I have to do today. I remember that I have to wake my kids up and make them breakfast. Waking them up is the easy part, trying to get them to go to bed is like giving baby monkeys a bunch of coffee and trying to make them go to bed. I turn off the water and hop out of the shower to dry myself of. I walk out of the bathroom and into my bedroom feeling a little more ready for the day. I put a nice pair of clothes on to start the day. I walk out of my room and down the stairs. Almost stepping on our cat, I leap down a couple extra stairs to avoid stepping on him. What a good way to start off the day. Once I get to the bottom of the stairs, I walk past my shelf which holds all of my collections. One of the most important collections I have though is the wallet that has been handed down to the first child for 3 generations. The tiny cracks on my Grandfathers wallet remind me of the cracked memories when he passed away.  The way the wallet shines reminds me of the sun. The bright button on the wallet reminds me of how bright my dad and Grandfather are.  I keep my collections really clean at all times.  I am like my collections, as clean as a carpet that has just been vacuumed.
After I get done making pancakes for my kids, I get them ready and soon they will be out the door to catch the bus. The bus finally comes blaring around the corner of the neighborhood and I can now leave for work. I lock the front door which my kids Jake and Eric just left through. Whenever I lock the front door I have to give the door a gigantic kick so the lock will fit in place correctly. Over the years the door kind of shifted and moved due to the weather and the earth moving. I walk over through the laundry room past our cat that seems to be looking strange today and put my shoes on and head out the door. I open the garage and open the door to my car. I turn the key to start the engine and soon I am pulling out of the garage. As I pull out of the driveway I feel as if there were something different with today. I feel as if I have some strange feeling. I get onto the road and shift my car into drive. From my house to work is about 25 minutes. I live about 15 minutes away from town and I have to drive to another nearby town to get to work. I work in a somewhat larger city as a civil engineer. I’m driving down the road looking at a peaceful morning as I would any other day of going to work. Still, something just felt a little different. It just felt like there was a chunk of something missing from my life. I drive through town and take the exit onto the highway to get to work. I finally get to work. I say hello to the usual people I see every day there. I try not to turn my days into repeats of the day before because I fear that if I did that my life would be boring. I go into the break room and get my coffee before I have to clock in. The time comes to when I have to clock in. I grab my card and slide it through the machine just like I do every day at work. Every day I am out at work or going to work I always keep a look out for valuable things I can collect. One of my favorite hobbies is collecting things. Whenever I look at the shelf with all the things I’ve collected. I smile because all of those things have a story behind them. One interesting story is when I was in a hotel lobby when all of a sudden something fell from above and landed straight in front of me and almost hit me. There were multiple floors above me that had balconies. I was walking by the fountain that was in the middle when a gold coin fell right in front of me barely hitting me. I looked up but I didn’t see anyone. I’m guessing they were trying to make the coin into the fountain but missed. I think this because of all the other coins that were in the fountain. After I picked up the coin and looked at it, I realized there was something different about it than all the other coins in the fountain. This one was bright gold and it was from Canada. I thought this was strange because I was closer to Mexico than I was to Canada. So, I took the coin home and put it on my shelf.  Some of my collections have such great stories behind them but they wouldn’t make sense to anyone else but me because the stories fit my background. I am like a person that stands out when it comes to these stories.
As I listen to the clock tick, I finish the review I have been working on all morning. I look at the time and it is 11:59. I get out of my chair and go to clock out for lunch break. I walk down the stairs and over to my car as I think of places to eat. Something still doesn’t feel right today. Work has gone good so far and so has my day but I can tell something is wrong. I come back into work and clock back in. I start on another project. This one has to do with checking over a road that was recently built. After hours of work on this project I finally decided to go home. I had put in a full day of hard work and was ready to see my family. I shut of my computer and walked over to clock out. I listened to that same distinct sound the machine makes when you clock out. Every time I do clock out, that sound gets stuck in my head. The sound usually goes away once I get to my car and turn the radio on though.
I walk down the stairs for the second time today and out to the parking lot. Right as I exit the building I realize that almost half a foot of snow has covered the ground while I was at work. I walk through the parking lot, trying to avoid getting my shoes wet. As I’m walking, I glance over to my left and see a strange object halfway covered with snow. I walk over to it to examine what it is and why it was there. I pick it up and as I look over it I have no idea as to what it is or why it’s there. It appears to be some type of handle that connected to something. I guess that it could have been attached to a snow plow at one point and then it just fell off. Anyway, I kept on walking and put the handle in the trunk of my car. I just thought that I could add it to the collections I have at home. I turned the key and started the car. I put the heat on high and turned on the defrost so I could see a little better.  I put my car in drive and drove out into the icy roads.
  The parking lot was a little slippery but I could still control the car. Once I pulled onto the main road, it was a lot better and I could tell they put salt down on them to prevent cars from sliding. I finally came to the exit. I switched lanes and pulled off. I came to a road that wasn’t plowed yet. I hit the brakes to slow down but the car didn’t stop as I planned so I slid a little while and then finally corrected the car. My heart rate got a lot higher. I finally made it home. I walked in the doorway like I always do. I took off my shoes and hung up my coat. I stroll past my shelf of collections and over the refrigerator to grab something to drink after a long hard day at work. I walk over to the family room and sit on my old favorite recliner. I pull the lever on the chair and listen to it as it makes a strange squeaking sound. The sound reminds me of the coping machine at work. Every time you print out paper or make a copy it also makes a weird squeaking noise. I turn on the television and flip through almost all of the channels just to find boring shows. The door opens and my kids come home from school. Every time they walk in the door I feel happier. The greatest part about my kids is watching them grow up. They run over to me and I stand up as they both give me a great big hug. We are all happy to see each other. I ask them how there day at school was and they said it was just like any other day. For some reason this reminded me of all my collections. When they said the word “just like any other day” I realized that the collections I have are kind of just useless items on a shelf. I know that at one point when I first got them they seemed like cool interesting pieces of art,  but now that they are just sitting there, they seem to be just collecting dust. This made me decide that I should get some of these off of my shelf and make something of them. I decided I was going to give them to my kids and share some of the stories that are behind my collections and make them theirs to keep. I pick out some items from the shelf that I feel my kids would be interested in. I call my first kid Eric from the kitchen. I decided to give him the part of the snow plow I found at work. I explained to him how and where I found it. I also explained how this may not look like anything but if you use your imagination you can think of this to be anything, like a rocket ship or a plane. I tell Eric to bring over my other kid Jake. Jake came running over from the kitchen with excitement in his eyes after seeing what I gave Eric. After looking at how excited Jake looked. I felt good that I was giving these gifts to my kids. I can only imagine what the look in my eyes was like by how excited Jake looked. But, the reason I am giving them these gifts is to make my kids happy just as I was when I collected these.
I take the money out of my wallet and hand my wallet to Jake. Jake eyes lit up as I handed it over to him. I explained how my great grandpa gave this to me and I told him that he should pass it on when he is older just like my dad did.